How I got banned from RvB

Update: People’s reactions to this have been very mixed, and that’s all I ever expected. The fact that people take their time to comment both positively and negatively indicates that people feel this is worth their time to do so and this is awesome. I’d like to say that I do not wish people to “boycott RvB” or anything of the sort. If you want to join, then join. I’m just dissapointed in the actions of some in leadership positions. Contrary to some posts, I’ve not posted this out of context as far as I am able. If there’s information hidden or wrong, it’s because I was not aware of it – either now or then. Take what you want from this post, because that’s all I ever wrote it for. Form your own opinions, both on myself and on others. On a lighter note, here’s the latest Ganked report.

I really never wanted to write such a post, but right now I’m a tad upset and really annoyed. Chat logs are involved, because at this point I don’t give a fuck.

Today, I got banned from the “R-v-B” channel (which I was on a lot), had my Forum access deleted (which I was on a lot) and was told the following by the RvB CEO:

[23:17:51] Del DelVechio > you are not welcome here anymore

“But tgl3” I hear you say, “surely you were at war? Surely you podded the CEO? Such a ban would surely require this”

Nope, I was sat in my wormhole, scouting in my new Tengu.

Since there’s no chance of me returning, I’m posting everything I have because I’m exceedingly aggravated.

So here’s a bit of background – There was a channel set up back when I first joined RvB called “RvB Spooning R Us” – this channel was set up by a Blue “Tokyo” and was created for people in RvB to “bitch” in, rather than the official “r-v-b” channel or local. Over time, this channel just turned into a place for friends and random RvB members to chat and hang out. However, Tokyo has not logged on for upwards of 2 months, and at some point I have become the sole operator.

When I originally left RvB, a few others left too. One of these was a Red member named Firetruck Man.

As of last week, Firetruck man has been sat on the Blue HQ station repairing anyone he can. Blue and Red. Obviously, the people in RvB are mad about this. It’s hindering fights.

Now, Firetruck Man is a regular with us in Spooning. I don’t fully agree with his RR game, but since he’s not fucking up the channel, I don’t care.

Yesterday, during a Ganked Roam, a Red Director convo’d me. “Ghost Nightmare” is also in the Spooning channel, but doesn’t talk as much. Ghost wanted Operator rights in Spooning to kick Firetruck Man.

At this point, I’m confused as hell. However, I presume Del’s response indicates that the matter is dropped, and again resume scouting.

R-V-B flashes, I tab over to check.

[ 2011.12.18 23:07:17 ] Archinquisitor > Is there any way to make eve-kill show the per-shiptype-statistic for an individual pilot?

I move to type an answer and NOPE

NOPE

“That’s odd”, thinks I, “I’ll browse the forum then”

NOPE

What.

Ok, the hell is this?

I open a convo with Del.

[ 2011.12.18 23:13:24 ] tgl3 > o/[ 2011.12.18 23:13:39 ] tgl3 > Might I ask why I got banned from r-v-b?[ 2011.12.18 23:13:39 ] Del DelVechio > yes?[ 2011.12.18 23:14:02 ] Del DelVechio > [23:12:12] ok tgl has been posting his private chats to FT that he has had with ghost about him repping and removing him from channels[ 2011.12.18 23:14:52 ] Del DelVechio > why do butt hurt guys just hang around and be idiots? just leave if you aren’t happy?[ 2011.12.18 23:15:03 ] Del DelVechio > that includes you too[ 2011.12.18 23:15:39 ] tgl3 > Because I still have respect for RvB, and I take an interest in it?[ 2011.12.18 23:16:03 ] Del DelVechio > just go away…you really don’t if you are going to do that shit[ 2011.12.18 23:16:47 ] tgl3 > I wasn’t doing it to troll RvB or anything like that – FT is a friend of myself and I found Ghost to be pretty hostile[ 2011.12.18 23:17:36 ] Del DelVechio > thats fine[ 2011.12.18 23:17:39 ] Del DelVechio > go join his corp[ 2011.12.18 23:17:51 ] Del DelVechio > you are not welcome here anymore[ 2011.12.18 23:18:26 ] tgl3 > I was trying to keep drama out of spooning, for once[ 2011.12.18 23:18:35 ] tgl3 > By not letting ghost ban FT, and I still havnt kicked Ghost out of spite[ 2011.12.18 23:19:00 ] Del DelVechio > but you will give him intel[ 2011.12.18 23:19:07 ] tgl3 > WHat intel??[ 2011.12.18 23:19:10 ] tgl3 > I’m in a wormhole[ 2011.12.18 23:19:14 ] tgl3 > What possible intel?[ 2011.12.18 23:19:21 ] tgl3 > “there’s blues outside”[ 2011.12.18 23:19:23 ] Del DelVechio > i am not playing games[ 2011.12.18 23:19:24 ] Del DelVechio > later

I… what?

What?

So just like that, any hope I’ve got of returning to RvB is gone. I was hoping to. That’s why I was still about, why I was on the forums and in the channels. Make some ISK, have fun in wormholes. Come back. Maybe after a year, but back is back.

Within 24 hours, I went from “ex Red Director” to some guy banned from RvB, because I didn’t want to give Ops to a Red Director who got all whiney whine with the CEO because he couldn’t have his toy, and any attempts at talking to the CEO were brushed off leaving me more confused.

Sorry to those in RvB I used to fly with. No chance of that happening again now.

It was a good community, that’s why I tried to stay involved. Now EVE is that little bit more dead.

I don’t know. I have no more words.

Actually, I do;

For fucks’ sake.

EDIT – Oh, and Ghost uses his neutral booster against RvB rules. It’s been proved to the CEO and yet nothing has been done. Good leadership there, guys. No favouritism at all.

EDIT 2 – I’m not going to go to war with RvB, nor enact a hate campaign or anything. This post is it. I’m done.

P.S. – Yes this could “make it worse” but from the way I was treated, I don’t think they could think of me any lower anyway.

People get into positions of power, they are going to powertrip. If powertripping doesn’t get what they want, they’ll stamp their feet and cry until they do. Ghost had enough of a temper tantrum to get you booted.

Well i cannot believe how your blog can make anything worse at this point. It might open some peoples eyes and shows what needs to be done (what should have actually been done a few months ago). i honestly believe rvb can return to the fun ways it used to be and even if in that rvb there is no place for us (for whatever reason) i want other people to experience the same fun i did in my 9 months there. i want them, when they look at my corp history to think “hey cool, rvb” and not “lol , noob carebearblobber”. well i am not gonna make this post any longer but if the right people read it… DO SOMETHING! NOW!

I wonder what kind of response there would be if I made a 3 corporation to go to war with the reds and the blues…
It might make things more interesting although I’m not sure how the guys at the top of rvb would take it. It would be interesting to see how many people would be interested in that.

Sorry to hear it. This is the second time I hear of drama of this sort where Del (who admittedly I don’t know) goes; ‘my way or the highway’.
Basically this tells me that in RvB you can’t critique or question a director even if you have valid reasons to and stick by your guns. There’s a word for that; totalitarianism. Which is fine for running an nullsec powerbloc but not for a supposedly fun hi-sec PvP enviorment.

Also ‘the silent treatment’ seriously? That is how RvB deals with shit? Sticking fingers in your ears and screaming lalalalalalalalalala can’t hear you! How very f’ing mature, I’m sure that solves shit. Really.

I’m actually a little more sympathetic to the power-trippy douches than I normally would be. If you were being ‘the only adult in the room’ that would be one thing, but your own behavior was pretty childish. Here’s how I look at it:

1. The guy asks you if you removed his OP roles and you answer ‘Not that I remember?’

I think you’d probably remember something like that. If you did remove his roles (and he was an OP in the channel before you were,) then you’re 100% in the wrong here. I suspect that given your immature behavior throughout that you probably did, but that’s just a guess on my part.

2. He asked you to give him his roles back that somebody took away. You decide not to. Then you forward the private chat to the asshole that he wanted to kick from the channel and have a little giggle. Then you play dumb (or maybe you ARE dumb?) when the RvB CEO confronts you for giving the asshole intel (I knew from the context exactly what he meant, I can’t believe you didn’t.) That’s very childish and shady.

Befriending someone who spends all of his free time griefing other people you know and then laughing with the griefer about private conversations you’ve had with those people behind their backs is probably going to piss those people off if they find out about it. They did. Should they have kicked you from their forums? Probably not. But I’ve been kicked from forums for a lot less.

My behaviour was far from perfect, without a doubt.
With regards to being confronted by the CEO and “playing dumb”, I did honestly not realise as to what he was referring at that time. So yes, I was dumb.
Firetruck was a friend of mine from RvB before he started this play, and has done nothing to me to change this fact. It could have easily been kept as a small isolated incident on some random side channel.

He lied on a forum post trying to defame me and causing significant drama.
Hence he was banned from said forum.

I have also found out he staged a “Coup” on that channel, removing everyone elses OP roles except his own (he is now the only OP).

That channel was originally a private channel for myself and its creator that we opened up to become the offical RVB complaining channel, where people could bitch at each other without causing drama for the rest of the corp, it later expanded allowing friends of RVB in to chat.

Firetruck man is not a friend to RVB.

When the creator of the channel returns from his hiatus I shall be having that channel removed from existence.

When I sent the chatlogs of our conversation to other directors one of them decided to take it to Del.

And now you are posting chatlogs taken out of context on your blog in an attempt to defame RVB

What “Coup”? That would imply I’m moderating the channel and actively banning people. So far the only one banned is you, and even that was late last night.
In no way did I lie on that forum post and it was not directed at you personally, it was used as an example for my argument and nothing more.
These chatlogs are not taken out of context in any way. o7o7o7

The fact that you have not only blogged about this and posted all these chat logs, as well as being all over Twitter and Reddit, it just comes across as you being a very angry and sad individual that needs to grow up a little.

Now, I have nothing personal against you and I enjoy your blog and all, but this is taking it too far in my opinion. From reading the chat logs, I have to conclude that Ghost started off being quite reasonable and I don’t see the point of why you were blocking his request. You were quite rude to him from the off, infact.

Also, Firetruck Man is not your friend. If you think he is, then you need to reassess the company you keep. He has been disrupting RvB for weeks now with his retarded antics. If you loved RvB as much as you imply, did you ever have a word with him and say “Hey FT, my mates in RvB are getting a bit pissed off with this now, enough is enough. Let’s troll someone else”.

Seems to me (and I may be wrong here) that you thought it was funny lulz and you didn’t have an issue with him being a complete tool. All Ghost wanted to do was have FT removed from an RvB channel, and I seriously don’t think that it was an unreasonable request given that FT has been pissing off RvB for weeks (and he was warned about it several times).

As for being banned from RvB, you brought it all on by yourself and it is nobody else’s fault apart from your own.

I’ve been done with RvB ever since they wouldn’t let my alt in because he “didn’t meet the requirements”. Decent alt, more than capable pilot behind him, but they acted like elitist assholes about a 2 week old character with a very specialized skill training.

RvB was fun while it lasted, but too many people take it way too seriously for a corp you just shoot each other in. That and TEST is treating me entirely too well 😀

There used to be some cool guys in RVB, but sadly the fake PVP, rent a blob and KB padding attracts a bad type of player. It’s become a paradise for those people who cannot survive or prosper in the real game environment, it’s a place where the ego can be stroked and those most involved can indulge in an artificial type of empire building. The smaller the pond, the bigger the fish feel…….

RVB should long ago have made the descision to either become a ‘proper’ corp or limit the length of membership time within its ranks to 6 months. RVB is now full of long termers who won’t take off their training wheels go elsewhere and why would they? They get to churn out killmails in an environment where the odds are heavily stacked in their favour, they get to live the life of the PVP elite without having either the skills or experiencing the real difficulties that they would meet in the wider game. If you try to fuck with their little playhouse they will burn you, they have very much more to lose than you. You have a valid life in other parts of the game, they will be, predominantly, failiures in the wider game and that’s the skinny. RVB policy is decided by its long serving members, its long serving members are mostly disfunctional and narcissistic exiles from Eve proper.

Explosions solve everything in Eve and my advice would be that you form a corp and start fighting them – ‘RVB is dead to me’ as a name maybe?! I have a few people on my shit list that I’d love to shoot in the face, you might be suprised by how many people would sign up for a pop at their former overlords. Joking aside, you’ll bring them a good fight, get to blow off some frustration and maybe clear the air a bit. RVB needs a bit of a kick up the arse, perhaps you could be the foot?

Yes, how dare people play a video game the way that they like. And running an ‘improper’ corp? Why I’m shocked. Shocked I say! Yah, ok, stupid shit like this happens occasionally, but most of us are here to have fun and that’s what matters.

And as far as those who like the idea of fighting RvB as a third party corp, as a RvB member, I say bring it on. We’re there for the PvP and more is always good. If you can manage to do anything besides camping Jita undock then we’ll really be impressed.

Be careful what you wish for. You must have only witnessed fail decs from 3 man corporations. When RVB was based in Everyshore it was effectively shut down by a corporation of experienced and motivated PVP’ers and it didn’t take too long either. Within a few days, most of your pilots were afraid to even undock. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that being able to field 150 frigates makes you invunerable – the reason RVB gets to wear its peacock feathers is that no one can be bothered to pluck them. Once someone got paid for their trouble that situation changed pretty rapidly.

There’s an awful lot of emotion here, I’ll admit. At the risk of putting myself “in the crosshairs”, as it were, I’ll leave my opinion.

I like RVB. I’m also (pretty much) a noob, so I think that’s okay. At some point in the future, I might try out other parts of Eve, but for now, this is a good fit for me (I think).

I don’t really know the history of the spooning channel, so I can’t speak to its origins or how it got to where it is. Whether Ghost should have ops or not isn’t something I care to debate. I think this situation started out poorly, and generally devolved from there. The end result here appears to cast a lot of people in a very poor light, and for what?

RvB has changed a lot over time, recently I think it’s for the worst but that’s my opinion. I was considering trying to get myself unbanned (see previous Tgl RvB rant), but I don’t see that happening anymore. Its another over reaction that doesn’t do a single thing to solve a problem and the current issues continue to get worse with leadership blatantly breaking rules and the real issues not even being addressed. BTW Firetruck gets his jollies off of local when his alt out in BFE has nothing to do. RvB Spooning has more people who have been kicked or quit than actual RvB members. If Tgl or those of us who had/have channel rights wanted to screw RvB they would have, easily. Hell I forgot to check one of my alts I had in blue with roles and it turns out it was kicked only two weeks ago (6 weeks after I was kicked). Stop being paranoid and freaking out over things you cannot control Del/others and focus on the shit that keeps going south on a daily basis that you can control.

You’d already been unbanned Shen, I have no idea what kind of drama lead to your leaving in the first place but you should remember the first rule of holes.

To tgl3, grow up. What ever conflict you and ghost had over the channel drama is irrelevant. Posting those chat logs is what got you banned and with good cause IMO.
It’s not exactly hard to figure out that your motivation in doing so was to stir up drama for lolz and doing so was detrimental to RVB’s health and Del made the right call to ban your dumb ass. It’s called providing aid and comfort to the enemy. By providing moral support to Firetruckman you made yourself a traitor to RVB. Del’s not that unreasonable if this had remained a private matter between you and Ghost I seriously doubt he’d have involved himself.

If you hadn’t shared those chat logs with Firetruck you might have an argument of unjust persecution caused by favoritism. But it’s perfectly clear you knew what would happen when you handed those logs over to Firetruck, that he’d turn around and use them to taunt Ghost and other RVBers.

Oh yeah
“Dave Benson
Be careful what you wish for. You must have only witnessed fail decs from 3 man corporations. When RVB was based in Everyshore it was effectively shut down by a corporation of experienced and motivated PVP’ers and it didn’t take too long either. Within a few days, most of your pilots were afraid to even undock. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that being able to field 150 frigates makes you invunerable – the reason RVB gets to wear its peacock feathers is that no one can be bothered to pluck them. Once someone got paid for their trouble that situation changed pretty rapidly.”

This is a bunch of BS, for one the only time war targets caused RVB any serious grief was when we were based in Verge Vendor not Everyshore, also the reason those war decs were so effective at the time had more to do with internal RVB leadership issues than with Lukka or Nova Arador.

Blue had two CEOs retire in rapid succession and had few competent FCs who were willing to step up and fill the void. That combined with a particularly effective Red command team resulted in low activity in blue as their members got tired of getting curb-stomped constantly. The lack of combat opportunities caused by this then resulted in fewer Reds logging in.

RVB is a much healthier and more robust organization today than it was then, Even by the time we’d settled into Everyshore RVB was more than able to fend off wardecs from large mercenary outfits. Ask Project Nemesis how it worked out for them when they stuck their hand into our little piece of EVE.

We’ve been involved in plenty of wars with reputable PVP outfits. They’ve managed to kill a bunch of our newbs we’ve managed to kill a bunch of their shinnies and in general fun was had by all. Some have been Neutral RR using asshats only intersted trying to get some easy kills, and some have been outfits looking for good fights and willing to give them (Noir was a good example of this cool outfit who were even willing to do a couple RVB style “arranged fights”)

We’ve also had uncountable fail decs of the type you suggested the OP to start and with the two exceptions during our last days in Verge Vendor they have generally ended in tears from the idiots who thought it would be a good idea to Dec a corporation with hundreds of active pilots who’s only interest is in blowing stuff up with their little 4 man corporations.

This isn’t cockiness this is just the basic facts. Are there outfits out there who could cause RVB serious harm? Sure there are, is tgl3 likely to be able to get one of them to come after us in earnest? I doubt it, even if he was interested in doing so.

P.S to tgl3, I was kind of harsh in my other post and while I don’t feel Del’s actions were unjustified, I suggest you take the advice I gave to Shen about the first rule of holes. You stop digging.
To my knowledge you didn’t break any rules when in RVB(Tinkerhell) or steal from the corp(Abram Thrust) or kick it when it was down in a fit of butthurt angst(Lukka) as such I don’t see anything that would preclude an eventual return if you managed to mature enough to see why what you did was wrong. Assuming your digging remains limited to this one rant.

I appreciate you taking the time to post here twice, and have also considered a lot of the points you made.
If I was indeed interested in hurting RvB (or annoying it, as is more likely) you’d find a war dec or neutral RR (like Firetruck) but as I’ve said, my involvement is limited to this one post.

Verge Vendor, Everyshore whatever – my point remains and you know what I’m talking about. The OP has no interest in fighting RVB and, as I stated earlier, that’s the case for almost everyone else in the game because there remains very little point in fighting RVB unless it is purely for LOLs, which is a very fine reason I grant you. But there are no RVB assets to steal, no space to claim and no reputation to be gained by stomping a high sec training corp. But your boasts about your corporation’s combat prowess are a bit like the British Home Guard of WW11 claiming a reputation based on the fact that they were never defeated in combat.

Your post illustrates more eloquently than I possibly could my previous point about what is wrong with the long term core members of RVB. You do all truly believe your own propaganda – something which the history books say is one of the first indicators of totalitarianism within an organisation or a state. What usually follows is a purge of the intelligent and the thinking and those who would seek to save the organisation from itself until all that is left are bully boys and ‘yes’ men. I think we’ve seen in this thread that that process in ongoing.

Your organisation continues to expel the brightest and the best, the very people who could provide it with an exciting and sustainable future and that is sad but not unexpected given the gross paranoia of your leadership. I’ll be watching future events with interest to see if history does indeed repeat itself.

You reply shows just how clueless you are about what you are trying to speak about.
Totalitarianism? You obviously don’t know Del very well. While it may be true that he’s not perfect and occassionally goes off half cocked and has a tendency to coddle the whinners a bit too much, I’d never say he was a “my way or the highway” type. Hell if he has a fault its that he’s too damned forgiving and unwilling to assert the authority that he was given.

The only people who get expelled are those who are too stupid and immature to follow the very limited rules and contribute to the success of the organization by helping to provide good fights.

If by the best and brightest you mean tools like Lukka and Tinkerhell who’s only interest is in stroking their own egos then good riddance. If you mean all the losers who think they are bad asses because they can park a sniper off an undock and pop newbs I wouldn’t call them a big loss either.

RVB is not a training corp it’s a fight club, there are certain behaviors that are conducive to the atmostphere that we are wanting to promote and some that are not.

Also RVB is a dictatorship not a democracy that’s the way it was intended, When Shen Morphe, Del and myself redid the structure under a single CEO we understood this and all agreed that Del was the best choice to take that role because we trusted his judgement and his intentions to keep RVB going.

I’ve not always agreed with every decision Del has made and I’ve never been shy about telling him such, my experiences are in sharp contrast to your assertion that Del can’t handle dissent because if that were the case I’d have long since been shown the door.

There is no propaganda to believe there is reality and this silly paranoid delusion you seem to be suffering from. Is RVB perfect? No, what is? It’s full of whiners and crybabies and clueless newbs who can’t seem to understand the concept of using alts to do their shopping. It’s also full of a lot of good pilots and cool folks who are fun to hang out with and blow up.

RVB has one mission and one mission only. To provide an enviroment where someone can drop in and get some quick fun pew pew. That’s it. Sometimes to promote such an environment someone has to make decisions. It was agreed by the two preceeding CEO’s and myself that Del was the best choice to make those decisions. And so far despite all the claims to the contrary that has proven to be an excelent choice. RVB continues to grow both in number of active pilots and most importantly in the volume of pretty pyrotechnic displays.